Almost exactly a year ago as an excuse for choosing northern Norway as a holiday destination, my husband and I attended the Tromso Film Festival. The idea came from a throwaway comment by Mark Kermode in his and Simon Mayo’s film review radio podcast on BBC Radio 5 Live. Despite the tenuous nature of the series of decisions that brought us to this festival, it turned out to be one of the best ideas either of us have had, and it inspired us to watch more films, more non-blockbuster films, and overall engage with them more. I left that festival with a determination to watch the rest of the films in the festival catalogue, to one day carry out a loft conversion to create a cosy cinema room, and, perhaps more realistically, to start writing down my thoughts about the films I watch (and indeed other art, music and TV I experience).

A year on, the last of those resolutions is finally taking effect. The start of a new year (a new decade, even!) seemed like a good occasion for a new project which can have no real start date. The format? If I should manage to keep it up, a weekly digest of everything I watch (which apparently is a lot). So here goes!

There are a lot of weeks which go by with very little of consequence entertaining me in the background, but by complete coincidence (or rather, carefully planned film release dates) 2020 has got off to a spectacular start. I have managed five films in five days, all completely unlike each other and all but one receiving my unreserved recommendation: Jojo Rabbit (2019, dir. Taika Waititi), Knives Out (2019, dir. Rian Johnson), Star Wars Episode IX: The Rise of Skywalker (2019, dir. J.J.Abrams), and completely out of the blue – Some Like It Hot (1959, dir. Billy Wilder) and Point Break (1991, dir. Kathryn Bigelow).

This will be unfair to the other films, but for me Jojo Rabbit was clearly the best film out of the lot – I came out of the cinema questioning whether it might be the best film I have ever seen, and I will be raving about it for quite some time. Critics who have given it negative reviews either have no sense of humour or must be making some failing attempt at some form of inverse political correctness. The criticism seems to be that the film does not show the Nazis to be horrific enough. But this seems to miss the point – the reality is that the awful things the Nazis did came from a blind belief in ideas that made people feel better about themselves, a hell of a lot of brainwashing, much innocent ignorance and even more passive ambivalence. It is precisely that slow creep of popularity which made them so strong and so dangerous, and it is precisely this slow creep of dangerous fascistic and nationalistic ideas which make some people feel better about themselves, which are growing across the world now. So if the film came across as showing that not all Nazis were bad, that is precisely the point – it shows that the danger of these ideas is that it takes ordinary people and makes them murderers, something we still struggle to avoid.

The film makes it very clear that we are laughing at the Nazis, not with them – and it is surely right to ridicule their ideas, because they are ridiculous! It is clear from the start that the 10-year-old boy has no clue what the Nazis stand for, and that comedy Hitler is a figment of his imagination – how he imagines Hitler to be from what he knows. Over the course of the film, this Hitler figure becomes more and more scary, and the boy confronts the inconsistency between his idea of what the Nazis stand for and what they actually stand for. A good example is the scene where the Gestapo arrive to search the boy’s house – this is possibly the most intense moment of the film, and the comedic presentation of the Gestapo does not make them any less scary. On the contrary, Stephen Merchent’s polite and friendly Captain Deertz is absolutely terrifying. Throughout the film, the comedy serves to make the serious moments of the film more poignant.

Indeed, the very point of the film is that we must be cautious about dismissing people or ideas because they are funny – that is often where the danger lies. Think of blustering Boris, or the awfully polite Michael Gove, the very well-spoken Jacob Rees-Mogg, or the simple-sounding Liz Truss with her excessive concern about imported cheese – it’s very hard to take them seriously, and this takes our attention away from what they actually do with the power we give them. (I could give examples in other jurisdictions too but somehow I don’t fancy the argument.)

All in all, it is a film I would heartily recommend and will probably see again. It is brilliantly written, very precisely executed (not a single minute or reference goes to waste), beautifully choreographed (with more than a nod to Wes Anderson stylistically), undoubtedly funny (the whole cinema was laughing), and surely a highlight of all of the actors’ careers. For me, aside from Taika Waititi’s bold decision to be Adolf, the performance which stood out most was Sam Rockwell’s Captain Klenzendorf, whose character is the most interesting for me – probably gay, hinting heavily from the start that he is not much in favour of any of this Nazi business if you pay attention, and making some difficult decisions throughout. Scarlett Johanssen’s presence was always going to be a plus, and it is a welcome change for Rebel Wilson who does not have a single joke about her being fat in the film. Of course, although those are the big names, it is Thomasin McKenzie and Roman Griffith Jones who deserve the real admiration – their acting was subtle and didn’t miss out a single detail. In just one shot, there is often a multitude of emotions, very accurately conveyed, so much so that it’s hard to imagine they are not in fact the characters they are portraying.

So if there is any one film I would recommend, it is this one. However, if you enjoy a detective story and find yourself with an opportunity to watch Knives Out, do, because it is another masterpiece. We had to go through three cinemas yesterday to find a couple of spare seats, and this is over a month since its original UK release date. Although I personally wasn’t completely convinced by Daniel Craig’s Southern American accent (not enough muscle relaxation at the lips), this was another set of great performances, an interesting concept and no detail left unused. For me the highlight was the car chase (a woman driving an old, small, poorly-performing car and outdoing half a dozen police cars nonetheless), but no less important was the message of the film – the poor Latina daughter of undocumented immigrants nurse is at the centre of the film and for once succeeds by being a kind and caring person, and not by virtue of having lots of money, or some superpower, or both. Overall it was an enjoyable film, and another one where the cinema was laughing out loud in chorus.

The third of the 2019 crop of films, Star Wars Episode IX: The Rise of Skywalker, was, unfortunately, not quite on that standard, although at points matching them on comedic effect. I mean it ticked all the boxes for a decent Star Wars film, but after Star Wars Episode VIII: The Last Jedi (2017, dir. Rian Johnson) it was a bit of a disappointment. In fairness, there were a lot of good things that had stuck around from the last film – we kept some of the women in key roles, we still have sufficient evidence to ship any of the main trio of characters, and teamwork still trumped individual heroics. More generally, it was nice to see that trust and kindness played a key role in securing successful outcomes in a number of confrontational encounters, there was a continued recognition that good/bad was not a binary scale, and the war was eventually won through unity and teamwork.

However, as a tutor once remarked on an essay of mine: “It would have been significantly improved through avoiding a number of unforced errors.” For a start, from the first minute of the film I found myself wondering whether I had accidentally walked into a screening of Harry Potter instead of Star Wars. Voldemort (I mean Palpatine) was coming back to life and needed his horcrux (I mean granddaughter) to regain full power. And of course the main mode of battle was the Avada Kedavra v Expelliarmus wand battle (I mean battles between two sources of the force against some object or each other). Aside from Harry Potter, I found myself at one stage watching a scene from The Titanic – whether copied or accidental it’s not clear.

Aside from unintended references, there were a number of other problems. Firstly, the shoehorning of unnecessary love interests (in the appropriate skin colours, of course) for each of the main characters, the slightly Jane Austen-esque “you will take my hand” line of argument from Kylo Ren and the obligatory kiss at the end. Secondly, several unexplained plot holes (which, despite actually watching it for the second time, I am already forgetting). And of course, thirdly, what must be the best-delivered line of all film ever: General Hux’s “I am the spy!”, rivalled only by a similarly pathetic line (I use the word ‘pathetic’ in its strict sense) in The Hobbit: The Battle of The Five Armies (2014, dir. Peter Jackson): “Legolas, your mother loved you!”

I have to say, it is probably unfair to criticise Star Wars so much, because I must admit I have never been sold on it in the first place (with the exception of The Last Jedi which I thought was a genuinely good film). Yes, in some ways it’s quite fun to watch, and it does touch on some interesting questions, but the story is always the same. There is a generic set of baddies who have very poorly explained motivations, and there is a generic resistance who are in contrast obviously the goodies. Through a series of complicated events the goodies ultimately win, and that is it. We are at the end of what is a non-committal end of a trilogy of trilogies, and no thought has been given to how the galaxy can be changed to avoid the rise of some new empire, let alone consider how it is that there are no legal or societal structures to protect people from having to end up in scavenging, drug dealing or being conscripted into some evil army. No wonder that we are currently at the brink of another war in the Middle East because this is likely to make Donald Trump popular enough to get re-elected, despite having started several wars now which have created voids for The Taliban, the Islamic State, and the general rise of fascism gaining popularity as a defence mechanism. If our big films ignore these problems, it is not surprising when our electorate does too.

Although no less fun or within genre than the Star Wars, Point Break yet again surprised me by how good it was. This is story about a police officer going undercover as a guy wanting to learn to surf in order to catch a band of bank robbers. In many ways it is just an excuse to watch Keanu Reeves go around semi-naked and repeatedly ‘firing his gun up in the air going argh’ (an apt reference in one of my two favourite films about police officers, Hot Fuzz (2007, dir. Edgar Wright), a must-watch for anyone in the law enforcement industry – the other being 21 Jump Street (2012, dirs. Lord and Miller), which I count as one with 22 Jump Street (2014, dirs. Lord and Miller)), and which also heavily references Point Break). However, there is a good reason why Point Break is so popular with parodies – it is a well-structured story, it gets you emotionally engaged, and it makes you question who is right and who is wrong. What I hadn’t realised before now is that it was directed by a woman, which should not be surprising at all.

However, the film which took me most by surprise was Some Like It Hot – whereas I was already familiar with Taika Waititi’s work from What We Do In The Shadows (2014) and Rian Johnson’s work from the only Star Wars episode really worth watching (sorry), and Star Wars and Point Break speak for themselves, I did not really know what to expect with this film. From an oldie Hollywood film featuring Marilyn Monroe I probably expected some mixture of heavily misogynistic and over-acted drama with a crass story. And despite The Guardian review being not far off that, I would say I was completely wrong. Although it was a film of its time, it showed misogyny but it showed it negatively. The women were presented as independent and interesting characters, and there was a good degree of complaint about men’s behaviour. I am sure valid criticisms of the film can be made, but overall I was gripped from the start and I enjoyed the film all the way through, at several points laughing out loud despite watching it by myself on the BBC iPlayer.

Altogether, this was a great selection of films to start with, and it is a miracle I got any work done at all. Now to the test of whether I can do keep this up next week, but in the meantime I have no hesitation in recommending these films – either in a cinema or on the iPlayer, where I believe the older two films are still available for another couple of days.

*With thanks to Katy Perry for inspiring the title of this post.